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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2020 10-28 SC Approved MinutesPage 1 of 14 COUNTY OF KAUAI SALARY COMMISSION PIIKOI BUILDING, 4444 RICE STREET, SUITE 300 LIHUE, HAWAII 96766 APPROVED MINUTES OF THE COMMISSION’S FIFTH TELECONFERENCE MEETING OCTOBER 28, 2020 ATTENDANCE Chair Trinette Kaui and Commissioners Robert Crowell, Leland Kahawai, Patrick Ono and Laurie Yoshida. Also, present Boards and Commissions Administrator Ellen Ching, Support Clerk Mercedes Omo; and Deputy County Attorney Andrew Michaels. Invited guests: Managing Director Michael Dahilig, Finance Director Reiko Matsuyama and Deputy Finance Director Michelle Lizama, Planning Director Kaaina Hull and County Clerk Jade Fountain-Tanigawa. MEETING CALLED TO ORDER AT 9:00 A.M. Chair Kaui: I would like to call the meeting to order. I would like to thank all of the Department Heads for preparing their reports to present to us so that we can all be refreshed and reconnected with all of the hard work that you folks are doing. So thank you very much. ROLL CALL TO ASCERTAIN QUORRUM Chair Kaui: Mercedes can you, please proceed with a roll call? Ms. Omo: Yes, Chair. Commissioner Crowell, Commissioner Kahawai, Commissioner Ono, Commissioner Yoshida and Chair Kaui. Mr. Crowell: Present. Mr. Kahawai: Present. Mr. Ono: Present. Ms. Yoshida: Present. Ms. Omo: Vice Chair Kenneth Rainforth was excused from the meeting. Chair Kaui: Here. Ms. Omo: We have a quorum to conduct business. Page 2 of 14 Chair Kaui: Thank you so much. Mercedes do we any scheduled public testimony at this time. Ms. Omo: None Chair. Chair Kaui: Okay, let us move on to our next item. Our next meeting is on November 25, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. It is the day before Thanksgiving. I know we scheduled that meeting earlier, but if anybody has any conflict maybe we can it discuss it the end and figure out another date. Nevertheless, as it stands right now the meeting will be on Wednesday, November 25 at 9:00 a.m. in the morning. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF SEPTEMBER 23, 2020 MEETING Chair Kaui: Okay, we have the approval of the minutes. I know all of you received a copy of the draft minutes. Does anybody have any comments and or corrections? Do we need a motion to approve the minutes? Mr. Kahawai: I move to approve the minutes, Chair. Chair Kaui: Okay. Ms. Yoshida: Second. Chair Kaui: We have a first and second to approve the minutes. Any discussion? Okay, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Opposed. Hearing none. The motion carries 5:0. BUSINESS SC 2020-4 Discussion and decision-making on submitting a Salary Resolution establishing the maximum salary caps of certain County officers and employees included in Section 3-2.1 of the Kauai County Code for the Fiscal Year 2021/2022. (On going) General overview by the following Department Heads on their respective Departments: (a) Managing Director Michael Dahilig (b) Finance Director Reiko Matsuyama and Deputy Finance Director Michelle Lizama (c) Planning Director Kaaina Hull (d) County Clerk Jade Fountain-Tanigawa Chair Kaui: Okay, we have Managing Director Dahilig up first so we would like to hear from you. Thank you Michael for joining us today. Mr. Dahilig: Thank you, Chair Kaui and members of the Commission. I appreciate the opportunity and the invitation to talk story with all of you regarding salaries in general and how Page 3 of 14 we are looking at our appointed personnel and how adequately compensated they are across the board. Having been around the county for close to a decade now and there has been a constant struggle. I know that the Commission had to resolve with respect to what our leaders are paid and what tends to be the salary inversion type of situation that’s presented because of collective bargaining. We admit that is something we will (in our minds) resolve with one particular action…it various by each bargaining unit and by the type of profession and it reflects the financial situation of our county as we are adequately compensate based on our (inaudible). I think that it is not a lost to anybody as we wait for the other shoe to drop given our fiscal reality with Covid. I want to make it clear, at least, on behalf of the Mayor’s office that salary increases are (in our minds) beyond the maximum is not something that we are entertaining by policy and is something we would like to ask the Salary Commission is entertain as well. I think it is simply both reality and sensitivity, to the fact that we have over 20% of unemployment on the island in this point in time. Consequently, we have not seen a lot a large rebound of the economy opening up. Governor Ige is withholding the transient accommodation tax because there is no transient accommodations type of revenues coming into the state coffers. We in turn are in a position where our regular civil service employment costs are increasing because of a previously agreed collective bargaining agreements. Our county as much as we want to have control we don’t have control over how and what is settled either by arbitration or handled by an agreement of the fact that the Governor holds half of the authority making power whereas, you only need one county with him to agree to do so. With that being said – I think (big picture wise) we understand that the reality of fiscal prudence is going to dictate the course of where I think our policy recommendations from our office would align. Given that our particular office has only two (2) appointed positions - the Mayor and the Managing Director, those two (2) positions largely tend to follow what we think is fair compensation versus any kind of comparative benchmarks that you see either across the state and across the nation based on the type of work. We believe that the current maximum salaries that have already been set do not need any increases at this time. Moving forward, if there are any type of adjustments that is necessitated it’s better discussed (at least for our office) in a period where the fiscal ability and financial ability of the county is set more down the line, rather than at this immediate juncture. I am available to answer questions, Chair for the Commission. Chair Kaui: Okay, thanks Mike, I really appreciate it. Are there any questions Commissioners? No questions. Mike, I know that everybody is facing difficulties so we appreciate you giving us the heads-up as to where the Mayor’s office is coming from. In due time, if you folks feel when it has warranted, please feel free to reach out to the Commission and we will look at it. Mr. Dahilig: Chair, I will say (just for the Commissions entertainment) policy wise, we are setting a budget picture for presentations to the new council next year. What we are attempting to do is (at least for the next fiscal period) as much as possible is to avoid furloughs of any of our employees so we e have instituted targeted freezes for particular positions at this point. Our goal is to try to keep our employment base full and not have our associates be subject to furloughs. You will probably will be seeing that coming from the state level. I know that all of that Page 4 of 14 (inaudible) is ongoing, but at least from a situation awareness standpoint of the Commission, if we do need to go down that path of austere measures, we will inform the Commission if we need your assistance. I think one of the scenarios that we can look at is doing internal pay reductions for our appointed personnel and if that is necessary, we can do it administratively. Again, if we do need assistance from the Commission we will certainly approach you. Chair Kaui: Okay, thank you very much. Anybody else? If not, thanks again Mike. Mr. Dahilig: Thank you Chair. Thank you Commissioners. Chair Kaui: Take care. Aloha. Mr. Ono: Thanks Mike. Ms. Yoshida: Thanks Mike. Mr. Crowell: Thanks Mike. Chair Kaui: Okay, next we have Finance Director Reiko Matsuyama and Deputy Director Michelle Lizama. Are you folks on? Ms. Matsuyama: Hi. Chair Kaui: Good morning. Ms. Lizama: Good morning. Ms. Matsuyama: Okay. I sent it a little slide to you folks to look at. I am not going to go through it in detail. I am hoping you folks have it in front of you. I am just going to run through it quickly and highlight several slides. Slide two (2) is the Department of Finance Organization Chart and you will see we are heavy on the administration side in the accounting division, IT division, purchasing. These divisions are internal county focused and our customers are internal county employees. On the opposite spectrum of that, we have the Department of Motor Vehicle and Real Property who are customer focused as well. We have just under ninety (90) positions that was allocated to us and we try to keep them all filled. Relative to Mike talking about hiring freezes, we are subject to some of those, but we got around that by hiring temporary employees where we do not have to carry benefits. We hire from our pool of former summer interns and we have been lucky (so far) that everyone meshed together with our staff and imbedded themselves in the daily operations. We will have only have one vacancy come 1 November and I am proud of that because personnel matters can be a challenge for us. When Michelle and I first started as directed by the Administration, we started to work on a mission/vision strategic plan for the Department of Finance. This really was not a (inaudible) approach, but getting input from our staff and our long-time staff members as to what they see Page 5 of 14 themselves as and what do they want people to see them as and what value they think they bring to the county. We are proud of the input they brought in and although it is still a work in progress, as far as implementation goes everyone in the Department seemed to embody the spirit of it. In fact, we put this PowerPoint together for our new hires so they can get orientated to the Department of Finance and so they understand the expectations that are going to come with the job. I am going to skip the gushy parts…you people can all read it. I am going to skip down to Slide 8 where it starts to get into details about our division. The first division is our administration division where Michelle and I reside. The main goals for the administration division is the budget and making sure that we abide by the reserve policy and the salary budget policy. Covid has proven why we need that because we have tapped into our reserves and we are probably going to need to do so again…I am not going to take credit, but they definitely established a reserve that we are tapping into now. Some of the other things that the administration division does is take care of county wide insurance policies…insurance renewals are coming up and a lot of it is county driven initiatives and are necessary for the county to function and to move forward. Unfortunately, we also have the humane society contract in the Department of Finance. I would love to give it to somebody else because that in itself has been a real struggle in years past. There are so many groups that have invested interest in all different sides related to the humane society and it just has not been very transparent so, we are trying to re-establish trust between the humane society and us, but it has been difficult, but we are moving in the right direction. Another is our Open-Gov Transparency Portal website. I am not sure if you folks have already visited the site, but it gives you good illustrative views of our budget and our current fiscal situation. We are always working on trying to improve the site so that the public can go on the site and see whatever they want at any given time. Moving on to our accounting division, accounting is our CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report) that we do each year, which is the bible of the county. We cannot go in for any grants if we do not get this audit done. We do a regular CAFR as well as single audit (C- plus) so that any federal grant monies that we are awarded and distribute, we have reports for those too. We pride ourselves on having the certificate of achievement for excellence from the GFOA for twenty-seven (27) consecutive years, and every year is like do not break that streak. Because we have to get it in a timely manner and it is always a push to the finish. For our accounting division, the pandemic has actually helped us to light the fire under them by putting forth more initiatives like going paperless, which I have been pushing for a while now, but things cannot get done during CAFR season so we have to wait until it is over. Nevertheless, the progress expeditiously and anything that the accounting division does is a countywide thing so they implement one process and it affects every fiscal officer and every fiscal person throughout the entire county and good changes have been made since the pandemic started and will continue to do so. For DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles), the biggest thing that Michelle and I have done is create a new vehicle license manager position, which previously was embedded in the treasurer position and not doing anything work related to DMV. We were the only county that had that Page 6 of 14 position embedded into treasury, so by separating those duties it has been a great relief for Michelle and me. We started the person in April in the mist of the pandemic, but he rolled with the punches and picked up exactly where we needed him to be, so we are excited to have him on the team. He already has been doing many awesome things in DMV including creating a new website where we have everything in one place and we are proud of it. That is something that we had on our agenda, but was not able to do it until he came on board, so we are excited about having him on the team. Some of the other things that we are doing is the KIOSK vehicle registration at Safeway Līhu‘e and Kapa‘a and most recently at the Ishihara Market in Waimea. A push for a north shore KIOSK is a battle, but we are going to work towards it. Motor Vehicle handles more than just vehicle transactions, they handle sewer and landfill payments. The staff are like bank tellers of the county. By implementing things like a lock-box, we reduced foot traffic in DMV where the bulk of our initiatives is to try to get people to do things outside of the DMV to reduce wait time and lines. It is a struggle, but we will always continue to look for ways to do things more efficient. We have this new cueing system - I do not know of you folks have visited the DMV recently, but it was supposed to be this great appointment system where a person would get text messages so they do not have to wait at the DMV and they can run their errands without having to standing in-line. It ended up being where we just got it during the pandemic and we never got the chance to show case it, but it really has helped us in terms of being able to go by appointment only. We are happy with it, but we have not been able to use it like how we wanted to. I hope we will be able to roll that out later on. Relative to moving towards a paperless direction in DMV it is a long way away, but getting things scanned digitally is our focus. I am not sure if you folks have visited DMV lately, but behind of the tellers there used to be a row of file cabinets, but we removed those cabinets and created a lot of space so we are proud of that. Our IT division is county-wide where all of our customers are internal county employees; Microsoft Office 365 is something IT has been working on for a while prior to the pandemic and thank God they did because this Teams Platform would not have been available if they had not started to work on it when they did. Before the pandemic, it was nice to have, then the pandemic hit and it was a need to have thing. We are proud of the work our IT Team has done. They are currently working on a strategic plan and we are calling it the Countywide IT evaluation, which is a comprehensive approach to provide direction. It is costing us a lot of money and I hope we can align ourselves to reduce duplicate contracts for the same vendors for all of the different departments and to really isolate things and start working in silos. That is what my hope as we look at this strategic plan. The purchasing division makes sure that the county abides by the state procurement laws. I cannot take credit for it, but Ernest Barreira when he first came into the shop, he told me that before he came on board the postage budget countywide was 30% in purchasing, but since then they have not used it at all. They do not have postage; they do not have pencils or pens on their desks because they do everything electronically. Signing contracts, I sign multi-billion dollar contracts and through Ernie’s efforts, I can now sign contracts electronically, also they now have a nice conference room and more space because they do not have any file cabinets in their office. It is something that they pride themselves on and is something that should be replicated across the county. Page 7 of 14 Real Property Division, we handle assessment collections. Going into this pandemic, they have the hard task of keeping our assessments up so during Covid we are not dying for revenue, but we still make it fair because we do not want to be slam with appeals come December. We had some good things happen in real property, we passed a bill that we are proud of and we are trying to implement paperless billing so that we do not have mail out 33,000 bills twice a year. So good things are happening in real property. For Treasury, we inherited a horrible situation. I do not know if you folks have been following where we had finding after finding during the CAFR process. There was so much turnover in there, to the point where we did not have any employees in treasury. We had one 89-day hire and that was it. Michelle and I put our boots on the ground and got our hands dirty and figured it out so we are proud because we are now fully staffed and have people who are gung-ho who want to change and improve the processes. So we done all that and eliminated some of the processes. Last year, we did a bond issuance with Kukui‘ula (inaudible) where the county has to be tied to it; it is a bond for development. The good thing is the county by no action of our own and with no financial implications will get 15% of the bond proceeds. We have to use it in the Kōloa and Po‘ipū region so it is money in our pockets, so we are proud of that as well. We are still learning and we have a lot to learn and although we have done many good things there is still – when I first started I saw so many things that needed changing and you try to dive into every single one and get nothing done. So very quickly, I learned that you have to choose your battles; choose the things that are most important and would affect the most change and run from there. I am open to answer any questions from you folks. Chair Kaui: Thank you Reiko. Thank you for a great presentation. I was very impressed. I thought you just did for us, but (laughter). Commissioners do any of you have questions for either Reiko or Michelle. Ms. Yoshida: I have a quick question. Does the ones that the Salary Commission set, are those EM’s or it is just the director and deputy. Ms. Matsuyama: Just the director and deputy. Ms. Yoshida: Okay, that is the only question I have. Chair Kaui: Thank you, Commissioner Yoshida. Is there anybody else? I have one quick question Reiko, did the county receive any type of Covid funding or grants if you will, during the pandemic. Ms. Matsuyama: We received CBGB money and Cares Act money. We got 28 million dollars from the CARES ACT Funding so many of our departments are knee deep getting rid of the CARES money. Purchasing for one oversees that we are abiding by the Cares Act regulations and then, the accounting division cuts the checks. Accounting on the backside would have to do a CIPA to reflect the federal funds, which is something that we normally do not have to comply Page 8 of 14 with and that means taking extra steps. That would be for the fiscal 2021 audit, which will happen this time next year. Chair Kaui: Okay, thank you. Just another question regarding the real property tax assessments. I know that it comes out in October, and then we have until December 31 to appeal. I don’t’ know if it comes under your jurisdiction, but has there been any thought about moving it to January, because I do the real property tax for our company and by the time we get the assessments and try to look at it’s already late November, Thanksgiving is here and then Christmas and everybody is taking vacation. We would usually try to talk to the assessors to draw a conclusion as to why, and if they have a good reason, we would not file an appeal. I am not sure if December 31 was looked at as the date and it cannot be changed. Ms. Matsuyama: We can look into. Michelle may have more comments because she is familiar with the real property tax side being that collections has been there for many years. I will say though that everything stems from the budget and we work the clock backwards so when the budget is due our revenue numbers have to be solid. We would work the clock backwards and the December 31 date it is what it is, but we could explore other ways to extend it to January, but I would not be (inaudible). Chair Kaui: Thank you. Anymore questions for Reiko or Michelle. Ms. Matsuyama: Thank for Commissioners for working on the Commission. I know that you guys get blasted a lot. Chair Kaui: We try. Okay, let us move on to Planning Director Kaaina Hull. Mr. Hull: Good morning Chair Kaui, and members of the Salary Commission. Thank you for having me over to talk to you folks. In talking with Ellen, she felt that it would be appropriate to talk about or give an overview, particularly for the new commissioners who are not well versed in what the Planning Department does. Therefore, I will give an overview of our mission as well as our various divisions. If you have any questions, please feel free to interrupt me at any time and ask away. The Planning Department is tasked ultimately with the management of the built environment and land use policies for the island of Kauai. Our primary policy-setting document, which is referred to as the General Plan and the General Plan essentially sets up the goals and policies of where we want to develop, how we want to manage our built development and where we want to preserve areas for no development or for certain things like open space and agriculture purposes. The General Plan is essentially a fifty thousand foot viewpoint policy, it is not hard and fact regulations, it is guidelines and policies for Kauai for a ten to 20-year period. From the General Plan we have various community plans recognizing that each community is different and has a unique set of conditions and desires. Kapa‘a does not necessarily want to look like Hanalei and Hanalei does not necessarily want to look or feel like Līhu‘e. We are also, tasked with managing what’s called the community plans for each of the regions and those are primarily policy documents, but more of that 20 thousand foot view of specific policies for our regions. So there Page 9 of 14 is the north shore community plan, east Kauai community plan, an Līhu‘e community plan, south Kauai community plan and a west side community plan. Those manage each policy for those regions and from those documents, we also have hard and fast regulations that we implement as regulatory requirements, such as how many houses you can build on a lot on record; where your setbacks are going to be; or what type of uses can occur on agriculture land and what cannot occur. That is really at the zoning ordinance level. So from the general plan to community plan to zoning ordinance we are task with enforcing these polices and or regulations, and to that affect we have four (4) different divisions within our Department. The first one is our long-range division, they manage those higher-level plans in the general plan and community plans because those plans have to be up-dated every so often. The general plan needs updating every 10 to 20 years. We just completed the General Plan update back in 2018 so those policies in working with the communities took about two to three years of robust community outreach of working in the public to make sure the communities desires are essentially voiced and have a strategy to move forward. The long range-division has a division manager and several long-range planners under her. They did the General Plan update and they are doing community plan updates as well. Back in 2015 they completed the Līhu‘e and South community plans, then they did the General Plan. We are currently in the tail end of updating the west side community plan, which has been a two (2) year process. We are at council now with it and when we are done with that, we will be looking at going east or north for their community plan updates. With all of the occurrences with climate change and the increase frequency and intensity of storms and an increase in hazardous conditions, we are looking at possibly doing an island wide resiliency plan. So that’s essentially what that group does in the long-range division. I would be remiss, if I did not point out, that in 2019 the American Planning Association National Chapter awarded Kauai the highest Planning Award in the nation for its General Plan update. It is essentially the best motion picture in Oscar’s – this is what our long-range team got nationally for the General Plan, so kudos to Marie Williams and her shop over there. From the long-range division, we then have the regulatory division, which is task with managing the specific permits that landowners or property owners have to pull to build and construct on their properties. Our front counter technicians do the vast majority of our work. They review condo-standard, over the counter building permits for single-family dwelling, a shed, a fence those type of things including interior renovations or commercial shops. I can say that while many horrific things are occurring with Covid some of the positive aspects I think that Reiko pointed out earlier about digitizing and going paperless. What we found with teleworking is I immediately shut down the entire office within a couple of weeks in the end of March and sent everyone home to telework. We were able to spin out laptops for them so that they could VIN into the systems here and they are now all teleworking including myself. We are now 20 to 30 percent working in our office. What I have learned is the front counter technicians who process the permits (whenever we get out of this) they will be placed on a rotational level; some in office and some at home rotating out because on an average (pre-Covid) a front counter technician would process a hundred permits a month - that is the average. Page 10 of 14 People teleworking from home who are not inundated with phone calls or front counter things, they are averaging two-hundred fifty to two-hundred eighty permits per month – they’re nearly tripling their productivity working from home. So that is one of the key take away that whenever we get out of this, we will be implementing to make sure that we still are able to take advantage of efficiencies of teleworking. On the side of those front-counter technicians, we have our regulatory planners that handle the higher level permits like the Coco Palms, if you will and those that require a public hearing and have to go before the Planning Commission that can be lengthier and complex. Aside from that, we also have our enforcement division and they are the ones essentially tasked with handling and enforcing any who violates to make sure that those property owners accountable and brought into compliance. While we have the fine authority and have levied fines for blatant abuse that exist our primary function of our enforcement division is not to be punitive – it is to bring properties into compliance. I can say with Covid the construction industry is actually booming – construction is happening at large scale levels such as renovations of hotels, large housing projects as well as the mom and pop homeowners making home repairs. People are home right now and I noticed that all of changes are happening. We actual doubled our complaint volume as far as possible illegal structures being built and our teams have to investigate each complaint and we are working our way through that. We also have another part of our enforcement division that is task specifically with shutting down illegal vacation rentals, which has been at the forefront for Hawaii for the past couple of years. We do not back down from any illegal vacation rentals despite of the fact that many of these illegal operators have very large war chests to hire ligation attorneys. When I first took over as Planning Director, we were facing 40 to 48 lawsuits against the Planning Department and most of it connected to us shutting down illegal vacation rentals. Property rights are fundamental to the Constitution so we have to go through due process, but we definitely fair it out and search for illegal rentals and when we do find them we hold fully to shut them down and a lot of it can lead to court cases. We were averaging about 100 to 130 illegal vacation rentals shut downs every year so that is the process. One of the things that happened during Covid that’s somewhat of a success is while we engage in enforcement of vacation rentals on a one-on-one property bases, we recognize that the platforms for B&B’s and VRBO’s provide a vehicle avenue for illegal operators to jump immediately on the world wide web and avail themselves to a global market. Trying to hold those platforms accountable has been one of our priorities for the past three to four years. We do not have authority from the state legislature to regulate those platforms so we have been lobbying at the legislature for the past three years to get that authority and every year we end up right at that final committee, it fell apart, and this year was no different. We were lobbying in a Covid environment and it fell apart and it looked like we were not going to get the authority, but behind the scenes I was in negotiations with some of these third host party platforms. I can say that the only reason (I think) with the sensitivity that many communities have against illegal vacation rentals it was (almost) hyper-sensitized in the Covid environment. The negotiations I was having on the side with these platforms started to progress at warp speed and despite of not being given the authority to regulates these platforms like Air B&B’s, Expedia, VRBO and Home away all signed an MOU with the County of Kauai three months ago. We will be transmitting our data; they will transmit their data they will also remove Page 11 of 14 any illegal operators from their platform. It is the first agreement signed by two-parties without a court order. San Francisco, Santa Monica and New York have all gotten this from the Air BnB and the VROB folks but they all went through several years of litigation all the up to the Ninth Circuit of Appeals. We were able to negotiate that and probably the first municipality to negotiate without a judge forcing down upon us. Therefore, we were very grateful to be there – we will be getting those numbers in three to four weeks where we will start to see them removing these illegal operators. Covid as allows us to negotiate these agreements. Lastly, is our clerical staff, they are the nuts and bolts of the Department and has kept us functioning along with some of the planners have they manage three commissions. Historic Preservation Commission, Open Space Acquisition Commission and the Planning Commission. It has absolutely been a joy working with the Planning Commission and the Mayor’s administration. That’s us in a nutshell; do you guys have any questions or criticisms. I have to ask one question since this is the Salary Commission. Both the deputy and I completely understand the financial environment and the hard position you folks are in so we are not anticipating any movement (quite honestly) given the global situation. I can say that there is at least one or two managers that will create an inversion this year whether they will be paid more than our deputy, but having said that we completely the environment we are living in. Do you have any questions for me? Chair Kaui: Thank you Kaaina, great presentation. Are there any questions Commissioners? Ms. Ching: Chair. Chair Kaui: Yes. Ms. Ching: I think it would be helpful if the Commission heard from the Director about how his staff has really been critical to the County’s response to Covid-19. Chair Kaui: Okay, Kaaina. Mr. Hull: Right when the pandemic hit travel shut down and the hotels were particularly going to start shutting their systems down and if people were still traveling during the pandemic and staying at the hotels that were still open my staff would monitor them to make sure that they stick with quarantine. If they did not, the arrests you saw in the paper came from worker in the hotel industry helping by reporting their guests who refused to quarantine. There were also concerns about the vacation rental industry on how their guests were going to be monitored; I can say though that we support vacation rentals and agree with them that they should be considered as a destination site; it is only the illegal vacations that we go after. Majority of the vacation rental sites eventually removed themselves from the site because the County did approved them as an accommodation site. My staff got on the world website and contacted every single advertising TVR listed on the World Wide Web. Thousands of individual emails went out to asking the TVR operator to remove their site and if they did not they were told that police action would be taken. After doing all of that, in April my staff was directed to Līhu‘e airport to help KPD and the National Guardsmen’s screen each individual incoming passenger to ensure that their place of quarantine was at an appropriate area and not a TVR or a vacant Page 12 of 14 property. My staff have been pulling 12 to 16 hour days seven days a week. Thankful for Reiko staff who took over the weekend shifts. Before October 15, any passenger who did not have an appropriate quarantine site KPD would put them back on the airplane or help them find an appropriate quarantine accommodation place and if they left, they will be arrested. Chair Kaui: Thank you Kaaina for the work on the General Plans. Mr. Kahawai: I just wanted to say that the digitalizing of the permitting process is great and I have seen the benefit of that. Ms. Hull: Thanks Leland. Chair Kaui: Thank you Kaaina for taking time out of your busy schedule, we appreciate it. Thank you for understanding about not having any salary increases in the near future. However, when the time comes, please feel free to reach out. Mr. Hull: Absolutely. Ms. Yoshida: Thanks Kaaina. Chair Kaui: Okay, last, but certainly not least, we have County Clerk Jade Fountain-Tanigawa. Ms. Tanigawa: Good morning Chair Kaui and Commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to be able to speak with you ‘all today. The Office of the County Clerk is one of the first original chartered Department and we operate two distinct sections in the legislative branch. One is the election division and the other is council services. The election division employees on an off- election year four (4) full-time civil servants and during an election year we increase that to- right now we are at sixteen (16) full-time staff and they come in at intermittent times and as it gets closer to the election we would pick-up a few more people. The counsel services division is responsible for doing research, drafting bills, maintaining records and any and all other clerical support that the office needs as well support for councilmembers. Our office is different in a sense that if you look at the other counties; other counties seem to have what is called personal staff, they assist councilmembers with research and drafting bills; doing a lot of their own personal work. Our operation is completely the opposite because we provided all of the work for seven (7) individual councilmembers. There is no one member that gets more help than others, but there times when…we do service all members equally and it has been very interesting because when new councilmembers get elected; whether it’s for the Kauai County Council or other counties their really unsure about what to do and how to operate. They often look for direction and we are able to provide that direction. We have a bunch of good staff members and we do not have many turnovers so we are very lucky in that sense. It’s funny to see members wanting their own personal staff. They experience what we provide and they kind of see why it works. I have been contacted at times from other counties who want to try to mesh their system to look something like ours; why because it’s much more cost effective and it really takes the politics out of the operation. We have a really good bunch of staff members and we are very fortunate not to have a lot of turn a Page 13 of 14 rounds, both in elections as well as in council services. We run a tight ship, we have seventeen (17) full-time staff in council services and everyone is able to staff every t ype of item. They kind of mentor each other and it works out really well for us. I’m not sure of anyone had a particular question. Chair Kaui: Are there any questions for Jade, Commissioners? Mr. Ono: I needed that explanation regarding the differences between the different counties. It explained some of the differences that we see with the comparisons so thank you for that. Ms. Tanigawa: You’re welcome. Chair Kaui: Jade, how is the elections going? Ms. Tanigawa: Knock on wood, so far so good. I think we will be very proud of the voter turnout. Vote by mail has been aside from convenient; and I think because it is a presidential election year we’ve been having great voter turnout. Keeping our fingers cross, I think we will surpass – this will be probably our best year. Chair Kaui: Good to know, thank you. High turnout with less work and volunteers. Good job. Ms. Tanigawa: Absolutely. With Covid, the legislature sure helped us out. Chair Kaui: Also, kudos to your staff in council services. I appreciate of the work they do in council services. Ms. Tanigawa: Thank you very much. Chair Kaui: Commissioners are they any more questions. If not, thank you Jade for coming and good luck with the election. Ms. Tanigawa: Thank you. Chair Kaui: Bob I know that you have to go. Mr. Crowell: Yes. Thank you. Chair Kaui: Bob before you go does the 25th work for you. Mr. Crowell: Yes, it does. Chair Kaui: Okay, Aloha. Ms. Ching: Chair, I have an update on the next group that will be coming before the Commission. Depending on what their workload is, the final four (4) Departments are Public Works, Police, Fire and Parks and Recreation. Page 14 of 14 Chair Kaui: Okay. That will be for our November meeting. Are there any other pressing issues Commissioners. I do not think we need to have an Executive Session. Ms. Ching: Chair can you confirm with the other members if the 25th is okay for them or did you want to change the date. Chair Kaui: I am available. Commissioners? Mr. Kahawai: Chair, I am available but there is something tentative that week, but I won’t know until the second week in November. But right now, I am available, but I may not be. Chair Kaui: All right. Ms. Yoshida: I will be out of town, but I will be available. Mr. Ono: I’m good with the 25th. Thank you. Chair Kaui: We will keep the date unless something else comes up. Ms. Yoshida: Ellen, can you let us know if we have resistance from the four (4) Department Heads because if they are not available we may have to reconsider the date. Ms. Ching: Yes. If anything changes for the Commissioners that we may not have a quorum I will talk with the Chair and communicate with you all about that. Chair Kaui: Okay, I need a motion to adjourn. Mr. Kahawai: Move to adjourn. Ms. Yoshida: Second. Chair Kaui: All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Opposed? Hearing none. The motion carries 4:0. At 10:17 a.m., the meeting adjourned. Submitted by: Mercedes Omo, Support Clerk Approved as circulated: January 27, 2021 Approved as amended: ______________________________ Chair, Trinette Kaui